"Before anyone laments the
State of the Union
today, I remind them
I grew up
in one of the most oppressive regimes the world has ever seen, so I'm
qualified to comment that what we have here is simply sweet by
comparison.
On another note nobody, certainly not the government, is responsible
except you for creating a sense of independence for yourself,
regardless of what's going on around you or happening to you.
On the surface of things, generalizing may seem like a good way to make
and prove a point, the hoped-for result of which would be
that the more subjects there are in the sample that comply with the
hypothesis, the more weight there'll be in support of its inference.
Equally, generalizing can detract from a perfectly valid hypothesis.
"Everyone knows ..." cavalierly wielded, sweeps under the
rug all those who we know don't know. It's a risky ploy at
best. At worst, it's sloppy.
That said, there's an underlying theme, an underpinning if
you will, which almost all (see how careful I am to mitigate the impact
of my own generalizing?) disciplines, paths, therapies, religions etc
etc
have in common.
This theme, this underpinning, this
common thread
comes in the form of a question. And it's a question which has various
shapes, inflections, foci, and facets ie
leading edges.
On
the face
of it, it may even seem as if there are multiple questions
comprising this theme, each different at their core. But there aren't.
There's only one (as the Highlander may have said).
Werner
distinguishes this question as
"Will ... we ...
survive?".
Engaging with this question (generalization alert!), disciplines,
paths, therapies, and religions obsess over survival as
the concern for human beings, and success as the point ie
as the goal of our lives. Bundled with survival as the central concern,
are threats to our survival, and ways and means of ensuring we survive.
Survival includes material survival, physical survival,
point-of-view
survival (which is a form of
ego
survival), individual survival, group survival, even spiritual survival
(which is another more pernicious form of
ego
survival). Although it's clearly a generalization, asserting "all" of
them obsess over surviving / ensuring survival, is
good enough for
jazz.
Werner's
work, unlike all the others, takes exception with survival inasmuch as
while it distinguishes survival (and I just did), it's
not prima facie focused on it. It's not unilaterally
concerned with it. It's not consumed by it. And it doesn't ever aver
it'll teach you to master surviving and / or to provide
"success-leaves-clues" recipes for success. What it teases out is
completion ie being complete. Being complete as
the context for
any action, begets more being complete, rendering all
action as an expression of being complete. Surviving, without
completion as
the context for
all actions, only begets more surviving. In a word, surviving is
Self-defeating,
going AWOL (Absent Without
Leave) during those vexing times when we're still
not experiencing being complete in spite of great success
(that's the inconvenient truth).
In the matter of declaring your life complete (and in
Werner's work
it's just that way: it gets down to declaring it complete),
there's nothing to win, there's nothing to succeed at. You're alive, so
being complete is already fait accompli. Against all possible
erudite denials to the contrary, what being complete and experiencing
being complete comes down to, is a matter of my
say so.
I speak my life as not complete? So it isn't. Then all that's left is
to survive and to try to succeed. I speak my life as complete? So it
is. Then all there is, is being complete and experiencing being
complete in any and all action. Look: being complete doesn't "happen to
you" as a result of something you do (you can't win, succeed at, or
cajole being complete). It's a
linguistic
action:
if I'm speaking being complete, I'm generating completion.
Werner's
work, unlike all the others, regards surviving / success as neither the
point nor the goal. Rather it's the starting
line.
In completion, my survival / success is already assured
ie it's already a possibility.
Werner
calls this
"playing from win".
You won't inherit this. It's not handed out. Neither is it guaranteed
like a right. Worse than that, it's arguably not even intuitive.
And while "all you have to do is speak it" may sound simple, it's not
always easy (if it were easy,
the whole world
would be transformed by now). To have completion (which is to say, to
be complete), you have to speak it for yourself. And nobody
is responsible except you for speaking it.